


Not Fade Away

by paperclipbitch



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Community: come_at_once, Community: fc_smorgasbord, F/M, Grieving John, Homoerotic subtext, Movie: A Game of Shadows, OT3 if you squint, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:06:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3519953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their marriage begins with a piece missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Fade Away

**Author's Note:**

> [Title is a Rolling Stones song.] Written for the prompt _Good morrow, friends, Saint Valentine is past_ at **come_at_once** (the 24 hour porn challenge). I did a great job by kind of forgetting to porn, but I like this anyway, so, there we have it.
> 
> Also for **fc_smorgasbord** for the prompt: 5. _unexpected emptiness ; gaping chasm._

They never talked about it, though it needed talking about.

Mary would have been happy to discuss it, perhaps over tea and a roaring fire, like civilised adults. Perhaps she would have added a generous amount of brandy to the tea, perhaps the conversation would have grated against her nerves, but nevertheless: it would have been talked over. Arranged, perhaps; yes, she could put it that way. Things would have been organised to the mutual dissatisfaction of both parties, she assumes, since no conversation with Sherlock Holmes ever seemed to end in the place it began or where it was supposed to go. 

In the end, they reached what could be charitably called a truce, though it more resembled an impasse. What John wanted didn’t matter, in the grand scheme of things; what mattered was what Mary would give and Holmes would take, or perhaps what Holmes would give and Mary would take. They could never quite agree on that, though there was at least the _acknowledgement_ that a ceasefire of some description would have to be arranged if any of them were to make it beyond the wedding.

None of that matters now, Mary supposes, thinking of waterfalls and darkness and John’s tired, bloody face when he returned home. 

Their marriage begins with a piece missing; a piece she always wanted to think of as superfluous, but always knew that it was not.

-

Mary married the man that she loved, a man who loved her. That’s what anyone dreams of, what little girls with lace doilies in their hands think of: love, love, that great mysterious magical spell that so few are ever blessed with. And she is lucky, and she is grateful, and she is glad of their home together, of the cosy parlour she calls her own, of John’s patients who seem grateful about the lack of gunshots from next door, the wallpaper that stays clean and doesn’t viciously peel itself from the walls as though under attack.

But Mary is not entirely sure that she was ready to walk into marriage and be the _only_ thing that John Watson loved. 

John’s grief is sweet and sharp and lists between flights of sadness and flights of manic, bright determinism to live his life better, wider, more full. John has lived through a war, carries the scars and the cane to remind him, and Mary kisses his wounded shoulder and the wounded curl of his mouth and in many ways he’ll always be a soldier, neat and brave and never ready to turn his back and run. But losses are expected in wartime, and no one’s compatriots ever seemed as invincible as Sherlock Holmes in an ill-fitting coat and a hat that belonged to someone else once even if it belonged to him now, strutting down the street with truth as his sword and shield and gun, when it came to that. 

Mary’s grief is different, and quieter, but honest, she thinks, in ways that John’s can never be. And there is no glory in winning a war of attrition this way. She expected a husband who would spend half his time starry-eyed and running through the backstreets of London with grazes on his knees and dirt on his face and tears in his shirts that she would have to mend, at home, in front of the fire, while he told her his amended version of how they came to be there. She expected Sherlock Holmes, grubby and petulant and perhaps drunk slumped on the good ottoman, relieved for her tea and whiskey while pretending he was not, interjecting in the parts where John faltered or stumbled or wasn’t telling the story to his satisfaction.

She expected to be a part of something; not the whole of it.

John’s energy and fear and love turned solely onto her is beautiful; it is terrifying.

-

Mary is a grown woman, and John a gentleman but not _too_ much of a gentleman, and to say that they waited until their wedding night would be an untruth that she can see Holmes unpicking and laughing over, if he were here now to count days on his fingers and theatrically roll his eyes. He probably knew even before she did when she would allow John to seduce her, his eyes bright and young suddenly, reverent when his hands cupped her breasts and his mouth crushed hers like hers was the only answer he ever wanted to hear ever again. 

They were clumsy and careful and unrepentant, because John knew that things can be fleeting and Mary knew that waiting grew dull after enough time. They would be married, Holmes’ best efforts notwithstanding, and Mary had no interest in standing uncertain and untouched on her wedding night, shearing off her nightdress for John’s inspection. Perhaps she somehow knew ahead of time that her wedding night wouldn’t be all it was supposed to be; Holmes managing to steal that from her after all.

She’ll let him keep that one. She gets every night after, even the ones she wasn’t planning on, the ones she would have relinquished easily, a wife with a husband who has interests outside of her and his typewriter. Now, John is cracked, if not entirely broken; writing their stories down as though he can preserve something sacred and lost if he only types fast enough, Holmes’ name splitting over his mouth as though it is too soon to say it. It will always be too soon to say it.

Their courtship is over; the days are gone when John split his time between stately afternoon teas and guns he later swore to her he didn’t fire, limp worse, the shadow of a bruise at the corner of his mouth where she kissed it. They have done with their secrets and their lies and their separated lives; now they are one, her husband a caged tiger of a docile doctor, Mary herself scared that she will never fill the shoes she meant to stand alongside, not replace. 

There’s a fearful, brittle adoration in their bedroom at night, as John climbs over her body and she steadies his hips with her hands, the ghost of the John Watson who once stood whole and hale before a war stripped that out and sent him stumbling back to London lying, for a moment, between them, as her fingertips brush his scars and he wears a grimace by lamplight that she kisses onto her own mouth, as wives have done for centuries when their warriors returned home. She is never afraid of him like this, as girls at school once whispered they might be, spread beneath their husband with his eyes glinting down at them. Their husbands were never going to be John Watson, though, kind and dangerous and frantic all at once, the energy he could once have used tracking murderers now redirected to the space between her thighs, the curves of her breasts, the way his moustache tickles and his breath catches when she curls her legs around him to hold him safe to her.

Mary knows what it is to lose someone, to build a universe around them and have it crumble back into your hands, and sometimes she is selfishly glad because if she had not then she would not have John. And yet other days there are pin-stabs to her heart, for the life she never had, for the husband she never married, for the home that wasn’t full of grief and confusion and a good ottoman that nobody has ever sat on.

John doesn’t break in daylight, doesn’t say the words she knows he wants to; it’s easier, somehow, to twine herself around him in the darkness and kiss him while he’s deep inside her, to bite at the curve of his shoulder and tell him that she can’t leave, she won’t leave, she’s still here and always will be. That things can part them but none of them will be waterfalls and dark water and a loss so quick it skinned though John’s hands and part of him is still disbelieving, even now.

Part of Mary doesn’t believe it either. Not Sherlock Holmes.

-

Their marriage has things other than tears and teeth in the darkness, of course; the moments when they share contented silences, or exchange memories that have them laughing hard enough to hurt. Mary likes being a wife; likes the moments when she pushes open the door between patients and John laughs, tugs her into his lap, and unpins the brooch at her throat to kiss her there, where her pulse flutters and leaps and hums in time to his.

It’s not new, anymore; John’s fingers, their callouses and scars and curves, are familiar now, no longer so terrifyingly new when he bunches her skirts up and slides two of them inside her, his eyes alight with something she can’t name but wants to capture in her cupped hands and hold safe. Her shirtwaist parted for him to mouth at her breasts, mumbling her name to make his moustache tickle at her nipple, her head tipping back as she laughs and wonders how long it will take to repair her hair to be fit to be seen in public again. It’s still a thrill, to be pressed against his desk while John tears her apart and remakes her, murmuring _Mary, Mary, Mary_ to keep them both afloat.

Later, flushed, she giggles to herself in the mirror, her reflection winks at her as though it knows something she doesn’t yet; the Sherlock Holmes standing over everyone’s shoulder, the truth held up like a triumphal banner to trip over later. She thinks about his expression over tea, calculating the curve of her lips, her collar a little askew, and looking perhaps scandalised or darkly amused. She can’t tell; imagines how Holmes would have shaped himself into their marriage, all her preparations falling to nothing after all, made superfluous in a long sharp moment that struck a chord she can still hear now, just out of reach.

John will kiss her even later, just below her ear, where it makes her shiver, makes her a little weak. This is her married life, now: just what she expected, and nothing like what she was ready for. She prepared and made space for someone, and that space is still there, she thinks; perhaps useless now. Perhaps just dormant.

-


End file.
